IceBreakr has released the long awaited updated Arma3Isla Duala v3.3 island.

Duala just got updated to 3.3. Yaay!

Changelog:

* added vast new region: Taris Island on North* over 332,000 placed objects* various improvements (satellite texture, coastline)* 90s Afrenian rifleman is now armed* added intro with towns (load island in Editor then return to main menu)* added Kamaz open & covered trucks for both factions* added Leopard 2A4 Evolution to Afrenian Army (Molatia has to rely on Russian RHS tanks for now, heh)* primary weapons made compatible with new bipod function (no more sinking in the ground)

SITUATION

Main branch update 1.48 saw the light of day last Thursday. For the majority of players it works well, and brought some useful additions, tweaks and fixes. Take a look at the for the game and the TECHREP for the tools if you'd like to know all the details. During the last days of testing, we decided to delay inclusion of Remote Script Execution. We found a few issues in complex use cases that we'd like to fix first. Once fully ready for the next update, it should help multiplayer designers to achieve modest optimizations and benefit from security improvements.

The team is aware of two issues affecting a smaller group of players. That doesn't make those issues less important. It does make them very hard to diagnose and solve, since we cannot reproduce them in-house. If you're experiencing such issues, any information you'd be willing to share may help to narrow down the cause(s). Specifically, we're investigating memory corruption crashes and unexplained performance degradation. Even though we know it does not help everyone, we would like to ask people to try the common solutions to problems: defragmenting HDD storage, running Steam file verification, updating hardware drivers, installing OS updates, switching back to the non-Beta Steam Client, and other methods listed here.

INTELLIGENCE

Our Creative Director, Jay Crowe, will take on an interesting panel at PAX Dev in Seattle this year. Together with DayZ's Brian Hicks and Paradox Interactive's Shams Jorjani, he will be debating the intricacies of developing and maintaining highly modifiable games, during a panel titled "A Clash of Kings: Vanilla v User-Generated Content".

Achievement Spotlights let us tell you more about features and modes that don't necessarily get the attention they deserve. One such mode is the "4+1 ZGM Bootcamp" multiplayer scenario that was created by Designer Nelson Duarte and introduced in 1.24 Bootcamp Update. Implied in its name, this mode caters to 4 Recruits and 1 Zeus Game Master Instructor. The latter can guide the Recruits through a series of pre-defined training courses, but also set up any dynamic challenge that comes to mind. The narrative context for the mode is NATO personnel training AAF troops at the Altis airport. Several Firing Ranges and Obstacle Courses are pre-build to use. The "Ready for Duty" achievement (0.4% global unlocks) is awarded after you've completed all stages as recruit once.

Receiving training from experienced human Instructors can be very powerful. They can use the Y key to open the Zeus interface and use all of its functionalities (Recruits can use the same key to ping the Instructor). Specifically for Bootcamp, there are 3 modules in the "Training" category that are of great use. "Bootcamp Stage" lets them start the pre-designed training courses. "Hint" triggers any of the game's Field Manual hints to all players. And to have a little bit of fun, they can use "Punishment" to force Recruits into push-ups or squats as a corrective measure. Being an actual character in the session, they can also lead by example and participate in the training. One excellent example of rounding off a session is to build a final live-fire Close Quarters Battle exam for the trainees. Final tip: you can press and hold T to reveal various Points Of Interest.

Senior Designer and drone overlord Borivoj Hlava came across an old but relevant video tutorial about the use of drones in Arma 3. Learn how to use a single Greyhawk to lase and strike a target, or how to make several UAVs work together. The instructions and tips are still accurate, so join us in thanking Oddity for uploading it!

OPERATIONS

The Art department would like to remind everyone that we're still looking for more external 3D artists for (paid) help with building Tanoa's assets. This is contract work without fixed working hours, so even if you can only contribute part-time, we're interested. Several recent recruits are already producing new buildings for the terrain! Find the details on our careers page.

LOGISTICS

The most recent update of the Arma 3 Tools Dev-Branch has added Game Updater support for Legacy Build branch. This tool lets you maintain several branches of the game on your hard drive at the same time, something which the Steam client itself does not do. The Legacy Build branch always contains the previous main branch version. It lets users switch to it in case of major issues with a new version, or just to compare the differences. Currently it contains update 1.46 and its access code is Arma3Legacy146.

We'd like to give modders a friendly piece of advise: please check the game's RPT log after running the game with your mod(s) enabled. While trying several popular mods recently, our team found various error messages being spammed. Besides indicating the error itself, this can also cause micro-freezes (unless you use -noLogs). Most of these errors are very simple to fix and involve missing sounds or textures. The RPT and other logs can be found in a folder like C:\Users\\AppData\Local\Arma 3\. Having said that, we'll be the first to admit that there can be such errors in the vanilla game as well. Let's clean things up together!

There is one more addition in 1.48, hidden away in the game's install folder. A new file, arma3_keyboard_layout.pdf, contains a localized control scheme guide for various aspects of the game (for the default and Industry Standard schemes). It's even laid out in a way that allows printing and folding into a convenient cheat sheet next to your PC.

SITUATION

Our thanks go out to those of you who've helped stress test the 1.48 Release Candidate (Steam access code: Arma3Update148RC) over the past week. The update is looking good, and on track for release this Wednesday. If you've found any major new issues, now is the time to share them with us on the Feedback Tracker. After reading these reports for the past weeks, you might have gotten the impression the entire team is working just on maintenance. However, work on the expansion is in full swing as well. Several community artists have joined the Tanoa art production army, and are producing new structures for the terrain. We'll also be sharing more details on iterations of Fatigue and Personal Protection soon. These are two of the more hotly debated aspects of the game, so our developers have splendid tweaks in progress. Please do keep reading; we're discussing some important security changes in the sections below.

INTELLIGENCE

The second Bohemia Interactive Humble Bundle has been live for a couple of days, but you can still grab one! Pay what you want for the majority of our games and support charity at the same time. A portion of your choosing goes to the American Red Cross and Electronic Frontier Foundation. Even if you already own some of these games, you can gift the rest (this does not apply to the $100 Bohemia Interactive Collection, which is 1 key). Act quickly, there's just a little over 2 days left.

The most recent weekly dev photo locks onto Producer Lukáš Veselý behind his desk in the Brno studio. His job is very important to the team and project running smoothly. He connects the developers to the rest of the company and its back office. Making games may appear to be all about programming, designing and producing artwork, but we also need to take care about the budget, legal topics, contracts and similar aspects. Closer to development, he defines workflows for multi-disciplinary teams and sets up pipelines to monitor progress. One example is a clear procedure for getting an asset from concept to release. Keeping track of new expansion vehicles, weapons and characters across all departments, guarding quality and securing a timely end result, is one of the many things Lukáš does to support the team. We thank him for making our lives easier!

Update 1.42 (Marksmen DLC) extended the Virtual Arsenal mode (LEARN > VIRTUAL ARSENAL) with a vehicle section. Clicking the Garage icon at the top of the screen will switch between personal equipment and vehicles. In this mode you can view all official and custom vehicles. A few statistics such as maximum speed and armor are shown for comparison. Holding the right mouse button and dragging will rotate the camera, while doing so using the left mouse button pans it. The mouse wheel controls zoom. With a vehicle selected in the categories on the left, you can do a few special things. The menu on the right lets you insert VR characters into any available crew or passenger positions. Vehicles that support it, will let you show or hide components such as the rear seats of the M-900 helicopter. Some vehicles also support several liveries or camouflage types (the recommended method for modders to set this up is VhC).

Of course just viewing the vehicles is not terribly exciting. Press the TRY button to immediately jump in and try the vehicle yourself. A few infantry and vehicle targets are available to test available weapon systems on. Importantly, Arsenal and Garage both let you try DLC assets without restrictions or ads! Advanced users can find more details about the modes on the Community Wiki. Booting up Garage for the first time is all you need to do for the "Virtual Vehicle Inspection" achievement, which has a global unlock percentage of 4.0% at time of writing.

What has the community been up to? Let us serve up a select few things that caught our eyes. The Binary Orchestra machinima team have released their "REMNANT" science-fiction short film. It's an impressive and creative use of Arma 3, mods and video editing that deserves to be seen.

Modder Heaven have published an article containing their top 10 Arma 3 mods to look forward to in 2015. Check them out and let us know which projects you feel were overlooked.

Speaking of mods, Ian Birnbaum has shared an interesting perspective on Make Arma Not War winner Deliverance via PC Gamer. In it, he explains why he feels it does a better job of telling a story than many other first-person shooters. He praises the custom voice work, cinematics, player freedom, as well as tackling the controversial topic of a racial conflict set on Altis. Peaked your interest? Check it out for yourself and see if you agree with Ian!

Some community groups are so serious about their experience, they create dedicated content and mods to enhance their experience. One such group is the 3 Commando Brigade. And they are not restricting use of their British Armed Forces equipment to their members. Anyone can download their work or apply for a spot in their ranks.

OPERATIONS

We're planning a significant change in update 1.50 in order to combat a common exploit. The change should not cause many problems, but it can cause confusion. Effectively, we intend to disable 'file patching' by default. File patching is the ability for the engine to load local scripts and other files to override versions in packed addons. Without file patching, the game only loads data from PBO and EBO files. The technique is used by developers and modders to quickly iterate on their work, but also by exploits in multiplayer. So what is our plan?

*Change the default for the whole game from file patching to no file patching (Dev-Branch will probably stay as it is now).* Add command-line parameter -filePatching to manually enable the former state (-noFilePatching already exists now).*Introduce server control to disallow file patching on clients.*Add scripting command filePatching to detect the actual state.

Please let us know whether you see any problems with this approach on the forums.

LOGISTICS

Together with BattlEye, we've decided to allow for the possibility to update the anti-cheat files on Arma 3's main branch more frequently. The motivation for this is to react more quickly and flexibly to new security threats. We want to do these small updates (only several megabytes) separate from game updates, so that we can rapidly isolate potential issues, and even revert changes if need be (for example if new restrictions affect too many players negatively by combating hacks too aggressively). There will not likely be elaborate change logs for these updates, but we will start a new type of Security Report (SECREP) on channels like Twitter to alert you about them happening.

SITUATION

The public testing phase of the next main branch update (1.48) has kicked off. It will last the entirety of this week. The result should be a more solid release next week, depending on the test outcomes. The Release Candidate Steam branch has been opened under access code Arma3Update148RC. With that comes the usual caution that you'll not be able to join 1.46 multiplayer servers, and that this branch may receive (daily) updates until release. Besides regular play-testing, several bigger multiplayer stress tests are being organised. Our internal Publishing QA team will invade David "Dwarden" Foltýn's CHIMERA servers this Thursday, and you can join too. We'll share further details via Twitter.

INTELLIGENCE

It may be a little cruel to tease you with more Tanoa info before you can visit it yourself, but representatives of the environment department have done a lovely Report In interview. Both Petr Sedlácek and Radim Vítek answer questions about how their team is structured, what their roles are, and how our virtual worlds are created. They then discuss what it's like creating a Pacific terrain like Tanoa and how far along it is in development. Particularly interesting are their accounts of a recent field trip to research the setting more closely. The guys have a lot of work in front of them over the coming months. We have absolute confidence in them delivering a fantastic "green hell" to explore, and the rest of the team will support them along the way!

That's not it either! Last Thursday, we filmed a new Tanoa-themed episode of our dev diaries in the sunny backyard of the Mníšek pod Brdy office. The next day was spent on-location in the Brno office, where the bulk of environment work is done.

Ladies and gentlemen, "Start Your Engines"! A flat 5.0% of worldwide players have tried and finished any official Time Trial since this achievement was introduced. Part of the PLAY > CHALLENGES game mode, these were always meant to just be fun distractions from the main game. They can however train up your skills in certain areas useful in combat, such as vehicle handling and split-second decision making. Basically, you are racing your vehicle through a series of Check Points until you reach the finish. You can try to beat the bronze, silver and gold trophies and improve upon your personal best record. Don't expect to beat gold on your first attempt, unless you're a natural pro of course! Keep replaying the trials, memorize the course, find shortcuts and get better. There are 10 official trials in total, though quite a few require DLC ownership. Without that, TT1: Circuit Training and TT6: Runway Lap can be played by anyone.

What can you do to improve your times?

Don't always move from one Check Point directly to another. Plan a clever path that factors in your inertia and anticipates your orientation towards the next Check Point.

By default, use Left Shift for a small speed boost and try cornering using your handbrake (X).

Don't always fly at maximum speed in the case of helicopters. You may need to burn off speed for some turns.

You'll also want to consider the Advanced Flight Model as it lets you be more maneuverable in the hands of a skilled pilot.

Missing a Check Point will incur a 10 second penalty. There are rare cases where the benefit of skipping outweigh this penalty.

Various mod teams are making great progress. Let's take a look at just two of last week's highlights. Shelestov has been working on his geo-typical Ukraine terrain, Orshanets , and it's looking amazingly detailed and rich. A version of the terrain is available to try, with a limited region brought up to target standards.

OPERATIONS

When you try version 1.48 for the first time, take a look at your holster. It will finally contain a visualized sidearm ; a popular request for a long time. It obviously looks much better than an empty holster, and it allows you to identify the sidearm on other people (dead or alive). However, this is really only about the visualization of the sidearm and some tricks were used to achieve it. The weapons dynamically scale slightly to fit in the universal holsters. Attachments are also not shown because the clipping issues are too hard to solve. Visit the updated weapon configuration guidelines to see how you can prepare your mods. More changes in this area are not ruled out, but also not expected in the near future.

Encoding Lead Petr Kolár briefs us on one further set of 1.48 tweaks: "There is one more interesting change in the upcoming patch, this time on the vehicle side of the game. We have tweaked the collision durability of most vehicles to make the gameplay smoother, yet still believable. Gone should be the infamous flat wheels after riding through a wobbly fence at low speeds, but hitting something hard should still cause some real damage to the car. Our precious Offroads may now even wander off the road without fears of being disabled when driven with some caution."

LOGISTICS

With the bulk of the team focused on the game, Tools Commissar Julien Vida is already preparing the next update of the Arma 3 Tools suite. A significantly iterated FSM Editor has been submitted for testing by programmer Marcel Marciš. It contains some very welcome usability enhancements, like the ability to search throughout states and code! There will also be a new tool, DSUtils, which provides an easy-to-use visual interface to all addon signature tools (formerly command-line based only).

SITUATION

The forthcoming 1.48 update will bring further stability improvements and some community-requested script commands to the game. Besides that, we're also wanting to roll out the first proper version of the improved remote script execution tech. Especially scenario designers and server administrators may want to keep reading this report to learn more and to determine whether their concerns have been addressed. We've also included information for those who are experiencing start-up issues with the game. While some of these are caused by the game itself, there are also many investigated cases where the problems lie with the hardware, Operating System, drivers or malware to name a few factors. We have provided various possible detection methods and solutions for those cases. Getting them solved will make it easier for us to identify and fix issues with the game itself, and of course make sure everyone can enjoy Arma 3! Our plan is to prepare the test data for 1.48 at the end of this week, and then enter the usual Release Candidate testing process.

INTELLIGENCE

Since you may have encountered the dreaded "Unusual process exit" error, also known as "Arma 3 has quit in an unusual manner". Because this error is often shown on top of the Launcher, many thought it indicated an issue with the Launcher itself. However, the Launcher is merely the messenger in this case. Don't shoot it. It detects the game has been closed incorrectly, such as when the Operating System (OS) is unable to start the game properly, or the game crashes. The exit code is provided by the OS and is not always clear, nor can we be sure what the cause is. We can however provide as much as information as possible, and list a number of potential solutions. Launcher Programmer Jiří Polášek has done a great job of collecting the information we have so far on this page. We'll be updating it when we learn more. It's also planned for the Launcher to incorporate more information and automated corruption detection directly. Meanwhile, you may benefit from tools like the Windows System File Checker to ensure your OS is in good condition.

We should clarify the ownership situation of the future expansion that will contain Tanoa. The only edition or bundle of the game which currently includes the expansion is the Supporter Edition. This was a special version during our public Alpha and Beta, and it's no longer available for purchase. It contained the game, all DLC and all not stand-alone expansions, as well as a mention in the in-game credits. The DLC Bundle does not contain the expansion, neither does the Digital Deluxe Edition. We'll announce the exact distribution options and pricing closer to release.

Arma 3 is a game for creators. The editor is their home. As Arma veterans know, this is where the sandbox nature of the game excels. By combining the gameplay mechanics and simulation of many aspects of the game, you can quickly make something fun. Pick a cool location, insert a few AI squads and give them simple movement waypoints. Then just make yourself the player in control of any of the units and experience the battle. When you are looking to design a more elaborate mission, multiplayer mode, narrative cutscene or mechanic, a powerful high-level scripting language is available. A huge reference guide of commands is being maintained on our Community Wiki by developers and community members, such as Killzone Kid, who also hosts an excellent blog on the topic of advanced scripting. We also recommend this series of video tutorials created by Jester814!

Achievement"Relentless Creator" (1.1%) requires you spend over 100 hours in the game's scenario editor (EDITOR > select a terrain > start creating). It does not matter whether this is time in the actual 2D User Interface, or time previewing a scenario from the editor. If you're used to the editor layout of older Arma games, you can switch between the Streamlined and Traditional interfaces via the menu accessible by Ctrl + L. Clicking the underscore _ in the top-right menu bar hides most of the UI. Several advanced tools can also come in handy. Ctrl + D opens the Debug Console, which you can use to execute script code or to watch the value of variables. The Functions Viewer opens by Ctrl + F and provides in-game documentation of all scripted functions (covering mathematical and other common operations). Finally, Ctrl + G launches the Config Viewer, where you can explore the run-time configuration of almost every aspect of the game. And, any skills you pick up now will quite comfortably carry over to the new 3D scenario editor that is under development!

OPERATIONS

The engine-supported remote script execution technology has now reached a feature complete state on Dev-Branch. ProgrammerRichard Biely is squashing a few more bugs, but we'd like to roll this out in 1.48. BIS_fnc_MP would not yet use it by default, but the underlying tech could be tested on a large scale. We believe the concerns regarding control and limitation of the feature have been addressed. Please take a good look at the remoteExec, remoteExecCall and CfgRemoteExec documentation. Let us know on the forums whether you believe we've missed potential security holes or there are other problems you have with the implementation.

Another technology that has seen its debut on Dev-Branch recently is support for Steam Leaderboards. The game has been integrated with the Steamworks API for a long time, and that made exposing this feature a reasonably straight-forward proposition for Senior Programmer Lukáš Gregor. To begin with, we've used the technology to add simple leaderboards for official Time Trials. A next logical step will be to port this implementation to Firing Drills. You can actually view the global rankings of every trial here, or filter for your Steam friends instead. Our design philosophy is to focus on comparing your results with your friends first, after that look at results around you, and only then look at the entire world. The open nature of the game makes it very hard to guard fully against exploits, so it may be that the worldwide top results become less-than-believable over time. We should also tell you that it's possible we'll need to reset the boards during the testing phase. We're also considering whether there is a way we can roll out access to custom leaderboards for unofficial mod(e)s. The script commands cannot now be used without hard-coded permissions (similar to Achievements).

LOGISTICS

Scenario designers beware! Tools Commissar Julien Vida asked us to inform you about 1.48's changes to the randomization of (FIA) headgear and facewear, as well as the method of disabling of Vehicle Customization (VhC). Please check your scenarios for compatibility. Julien will also be writing an OPREP on the topic of VhC in the near future.

A small group of players have reported their game suffers from mini-freezes when clicking or moving. BattlEye has investigated many of these reports, and in all cases so far, the cause has been malware, adware or other Potentially Unwanted Programs. These programs cause certain DLLs to be infinitely reloaded and choke the anti-cheat service. Please use trusted anti-malware software to scan your computer for threats and to repair them.